Miikka Kiprusoff inched out of his crease, watching the puck,waiting as Tampa Bay Lightning center Brad Richards skated inalone on a shorthanded breakaway. There was no score in thesecond period of Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals last Saturday,and Richards had plenty of options against the Calgary Flames'6'2", 190-pound goalie. Deke. Shoot high gloveside. Go lowblocker. Test the five hole. Kiprusoff was reading a shot to theglove-hand post but then saw Richards slightly alter the angleof his stick to try to beat him stickside instead. Richardswristed a shot, the puck rising toward a yawning top corner. "Isaw him get a piece of it," Richards would say later in theLightning dressing room, the only quiet place in Calgary afterthe game. "When I saw that, I had the feeling, Oh, this isn'tgood. Nothing good was going to come of that." Not for TampaBay, anyway. Sixteen seconds after Kiprusoff's dramatic savewith his blocker, the Flames' Chris Simon scored on the powerplay. Calgary was on its way to a 3-0 win.

One day after Canadian prime minister Paul Martin traipsed into the dressing room to meet players and receive a personalized Flames jersey, Kiprusoff provided a 60-minute photo op in Game 3 that was considerably more dazzling. See the Kipper whip from post to post. Watch him thrust out his right pad on Lightning sniper Ruslan Fedotenko's shot and make a leg save worthy of Dominik Hasek in his prime. See him peer through traffic and turn aside blasts from the point. Although the Lightning rallied to deadlock the series at two games apiece with a 1-0 win on Monday, Kiprusoff allowed Tampa to score only when it had a two-man advantage. Going into Game 5, he has a league-high five playoff shutouts and a tiny 1.83 goals-against average and has been the foundation for the Flames' improbable Stanley Cup pursuit. He has the Lightning in a bottle.

If this was below-the-fold stuff in your sports section, the return of the Stanley Cup final to a hockey-besotted nation after a 10-year absence was bold-type, A1 material all over Canada. The ESPN telecast of the series opener drew little more than a million U.S. viewers, but in Canada it attracted some 3 million on CBC and another 500,000 on RDS, a French-language sports network based in Quebec. Let's check the math: There was more than triple the number of viewers for Flames-Lightning in a nation with about one tenth the population of the U.S.

Of course the epicenter of this True North nuttiness was Calgary, an oil city of nearly 1 million that feels more like down-home Denver than Toronto. To Calgarians, the home games were like a cross between Christmas morning and their 21st birthdays. Downtown was abuzz with celebratory fans honking their car horns and chanting, "Go Flames Go!" And that was in the afternoon before Game 3. This was a city as mosh pit, joined vicariously by the rest of a nation that shares its infatuation for a rank underdog--the team and the sport. (Except Quebec, of course, where sentiment was split because of the homegrown darlings who play for Tampa Bay, Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St. Louis.)

While Calgary was awash in its "C of Red," there was something more sepia-toned about Kiprusoff. He arrived in Calgary last November from another team and another time. He makes stylish, old-time saves, the kind that predominated before heavily armored goalies began dropping to their knees, puffing themselves up like bullfrogs and waiting for the puck to strike them. Kiprusoff made 21 saves last Saturday, and the quality was every bit as important as the quantity.

"Maybe we're trying to move the puck and get him out of position too much," Lightning center Tim Taylor said after Game 3. "It's almost like it was when we used to play against Hasek. The coaches would go over and over the goaltender, and you'd end up thinking too much."

In that case Kiprusoff was living in a three-bedroom between the Lightning's collective cerebrum and cerebral cortex. The preseries favorite, Tampa Bay did not handle either Kiprusoff or its first experience in the final with much aplomb, alternating wildly between efforts that were middling and inspired. That could be an outgrowth of the mood set by tightly wound coach John Tortorella, who seemed to be enjoying the finals about as much as a tax audit. He is a passionate advocate for hockey, but his single-mindedness can seem peevish. After Lightning defenseman Dan Boyle's house was severely damaged by fire during Game 1, a 4-1 Calgary win, Tortorella downplayed the event, saying that because no one was injured, it was "just a bunch of wood burning." Sure. And the trophy NHL commissioner Gary Bettman will award at the end of the series is just a hunk of silver.

Many Tampa Bay players have also shown questionable judgment, notably Lecavalier. He was sublime in Game 2, combining the physical edge that has tinted his best playoff performances with an unmatched offensive flair. He created the first goal by backhanding the puck off the back of the net--a direct-from-the-pond move that flummoxed Calgary checker Stephane Yelle--then spinning 180 degrees and skating out with the puck. The only things missing were Sweet Georgia Brown and the confetti-in-the-bucket gag. But then, drunk on his own skill and toughness, Lecavalier tried the move again in Game 3 (it failed) and also picked a fight with Flames captain Jarome Iginla. Although Tortorella applauded from the bench, the tussle was as misguided as it was startling; Iginla is a semiregular pugilist despite his day job as Calgary's top offensive threat, while Lecavalier had had just 10 fights in his six-year NHL career. Iginla won that battle and the war, setting up Simon's goal and scoring a late one of his own.

Iginla is the omnipresent face of the Flames and indeed of all Canadian hockey. Principal CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge flew from Toronto to Tampa to conduct a 30-minute interview with him last week. (Imagine Dan Rather wanting a good half hour with St. Louis.) But Kiprusoff has been a perfect complement on this transcendent joy ride. Unlike the effervescent Iginla, Kiprusoff seldom reveals anything other than a luxuriant orange thatch of playoff beard when he slips his mask on top of his head during stoppages in play. Even after being tripped up by the Lightning's Andre Roy midway through the third period of Calgary's 4-1 loss in Game 2, he looked unperturbed. "He didn't get all revved up and start slashing [Tampa Bay players]," Flames defenseman Andrew Ference said. "His demeanor is a huge help, especially after a tough night or a loss."

For Kiprusoff, Game 2 against the Lightning marked the fifth time he had allowed four or more goals in a playoff defeat. In the five subsequent games--all wins--Kiprusoff allowed a total of five goals. He was a remarkable 7-1 after playoff losses, with a 1.17 goals-against average and a .953 save percentage in those games, numbers that speak to will as much as to skill. He has mastered the art of controlling a rebound, especially his own. "He's always been able to bounce back," Montreal Canadiens captain Saku Koivu, who grew up in the same Turku neighborhood, said by telephone from Finland last Thursday. "He'd have a bad game and it was like, Screw this."

The Flames acquired Kiprusoff, then a career backup with a record of 14-21-3, from the San Jose Sharks in November for a conditional 2005 draft pick. At that time the only thing lower than the expectations around Kiprusoff were his pads. Although most goalies would wear hip waders if they could get away with it--the NHL limited the allowable pad length to 38 inches this season--Kiprusoff was flitting around in 35-inchers. David Marcoux, Calgary's goalie coach, convinced Kiprusoff that by shorting himself he was ceding space between his legs and got him to switch to 36 1/2-inch-long pads that extend farther up his thighs. Not that Kiprusoff spent much time on his knees. Marcoux encouraged him to mix in a little more butterfly and moved him deeper into the crease on plays coming off the wings, allowing the goalie to use his astonishing lateral speed more effectively. The coach did not, however, tinker with Kiprusoff's glove hand. Says Marcoux, "You don't mess with a gold mine."

After a succession of otherwise estimable European goalies who haven't caught the puck as much as subdued it, and who have handled it as if it were toxic, Kiprusoff has distinguished himself with his glovework and polished outlet passing. The goalie who finished the season with a 1.69 goals-against average, the lowest in more than 60 years, defies stereotypes and scouting reports. "He doesn't do the same thing all the time, which is a sign of a thinking goalie," Tampa Bay associate coach Craig Ramsay says. "That makes him difficult to read."

To the Lightning, he might as well be Ulysses.

SI.comFor more Stanley Cup finals coverage, including a series breakdown, go to si.com/hockey/nhl/specials/playoffs/2004.

COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF VINNICK/GETTY IMAGES ACCESS DENIED Kiprusoff, here with Ference helping him stop Cory Stillman, snuffed the Lightning in Game 3 for his fifth playoff shutout.COLOR PHOTO: DAVID E. KLUTHO BOLT CRUSHER Martin Gelinas is just one of the Flames who's hit the Lightning hard.COLOR PHOTO: DAVID E. KLUTHO MIEN GAME Even as emotions run wild around him, Kiprusoff masks his feelings.COLOR PHOTO: LOU CAPOZZOLA (KIPRUSOFF WITHOUT MASK) [See caption above]

Downtown Calgary was abuzz with fans honking their horns and chanting "Go Flames Go." And that was before the game.